About this error
This error can occur for a variety of reasons and is often accompanied by additional error information to help pinpoint the cause of the issue.
In this article we have attempted to describe various conditions which might be producing this error and have provided links to relevant solution articles.
We also provide a utility called VSSFix which can be used to fix VSS, by recreating the correct registry setting and re-registering all VSS components. Use this only if you are unable to find a more specific solution using the provided articles. You will be able to download VSSFix at the end of this article (Found here).
Problem cases & solutions
Disks with a non standard sector size
If you see the following in the extended VSS information:
ERROR: COM call "m_pVssObject->BackupComplete(&pAsync)" failed. - Returned HRESULT = 0x80042301 - Error text: VSS_E_BAD_STATE
You may have a disk with a non-standard sector size attached to your system, see here for a solution:
VSS fails due to disks with a non-standard sector size- Other VSS applications have modified VSS
If you have used other backup (or any VSS aware) software in the past it may have altered VSS. To fix this issue see here:
VSS Fails due to modification by 3rd party software - VSS failing on Windows Server 2008 R2 also producing Windows Event ID 12293
This article describes a fix for a specific issue that can occur on Windows Server 2008 R2:
VSS Result Code 0x8004230f with Event ID 12293 on Windows Server 2008 R2 without BitLocker
Identifying VSS error information
You have 3 pieces of information to help diagnose the issue:
- HRESULT - This is a windows function error code.
- Error text - This is descriptive error text provided by VSS.
- Result code - This is the VSS result code.
VSSFix
If you have not been able to fix your issue using one of the articles linked above please download one of the below programs to fix your problem:
VSSfix 32bit - download
VSSfix 64bit - download